


Ring Pop

by LiviKate



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Bucky being precious, Fluff, M/M, Marriage Proposal, PWPJF, Plot What Plot, Pointless fluff, Snarky Bucky, Supreme Court Decision, just fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2015-06-29
Packaged: 2018-04-06 19:37:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4234131
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LiviKate/pseuds/LiviKate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time Bucky hears about same-sex marriage, it's right after the Supreme Court decision, legalizing it for the whole nation. Funny, Steve never mentioned anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ring Pop

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be honest with you guys, this story is the literary equivalent of a Ring Pop. It's sickeningly sweet, with a poorly constructed design and absolutely zero nutritional value. I am so sorry.

He’s standing in Steve’s kitchen in Stark Tower, making nachos with Natasha, two years after he shook off the Winter Soldier and came back to his best pal, when he hears it for the first time. Natasha is talking to him, something about possibly getting a cat just so she could make Tony take care of it when she’s abroad, but Bucky’s listening to the news instead, idly droning in the background.

“What are they talking about?” He interrupts, ignoring Natasha’s huff of irritation, eyes glued to the screen over her shoulder. 

There’s a woman in a garishly pink blazer holding a microphone outside an old, stately building, the crowd behind her positively streaming with flags in rainbow colors and bright, joyous signs. It looks like a rave in a Skittles factory, or the stained glass windows in the church Steve went to in Brooklyn.

“Oh, that,” Nat says, glancing at the TV before turning back to her lunch. “Gay marriage was just legalized nationally.” She shrugged as if this was commonplace news, as if there was little surprising or interesting in it. “There were a couple states stubbornly holding out. Supreme Court finally said they couldn’t be legally bigoted anymore.”

Bucky was confused. It felt like the very blood in his body paused on its rush to work while he attempted to comprehend the information he’d just been given. He’d had a lot of moments like this in the years since he’d gotten his own mind back, but this was probably one of the worst.

“So you’re telling me that fellas can marry other fellas now? And dames with other dames?” He asked, holding the knife carefully in his hand, aware of the weight and balance in a way his training wouldn’t let him ignore.

“Yes, and what I’ve _been_ telling you for months now is you can’t keep calling women “dames.” It’s disrespectful,” Natasha reminded him with a raised brow.

Bucky couldn’t care less at the moment, as his gears were spinning; both in his head and in his arm, his metal hand squeezing the countertop as he put a few things together.

“You said some states had been holding out?” Natasha shrugged, not looking up from the jalapeño on her cutting board. “So some states had already said it was alright? Made it legal and all?”

“Yeah,” she answered carefully, looking up at him with the still stare she had whenever she was figuring something out about you that you’d probably rather she didn’t know. “New York was one of them.”

“When,” he stated more than asked. To ask a question, one requires inflection, and there were a few too many feelings rising up in Bucky’s throat for anything other than a choked word or two to squeeze by.

“2009 maybe? Somewhere around there. It’s been a while,” Natasha said, looking at him carefully. He nodded once at her, a thank you and a dismissal. He swallowed down the bad taste in his mouth.

Seeing his expression and apparently not liking it much, Natasha fitted him with another disapproving look.

“Barnes, you’ve got a boyfriend, you’re not allowed to be homophobic. You’ve just gotten passed that whole self-loathing thing you were wearing like a favorite sweatshirt, don’t pull it back out now.”

“That ain’t what I’m thinking,” he mumbled to the tomato guts running across his cutting board. She studied him quietly for another couple seconds.

“This is a good thing, James,” she said, in the tone he’d only heard once at the animal shelter, directed at a kitten with one eye. “People are finally getting to be who they really are, with who they really want to be with. People aren’t getting that choice taken away from them anymore. It’s a really good thing.”

“Yeah, ‘course, I know it is,” Bucky grumbled, glaring at the reporter who was interviewing one of the jubilant crowd members. He slipped a rainbow necklace around her neck. He smiled, wide and genuine for the camera. “It’s real good. I just didn’t know that it was a thing, is all.”

“Huh,” was all Natasha said, but it was clear she heard the underlying message there. Bucky hadn’t known because no one had thought to tell him. He swallowed again. It hurt going down, and something hot and angry was forcing its way back up.

“Steven Rogers, get the fuck in here,” he called into the living room where he and Clint were playing pool.

“What is it, Buck?” Steve asked, popping his head around the wall warily.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Bucky demanded, voice pinched and angry, knife gesturing at the television screen, now displaying a T-Mobile commercial apparently filmed and primed for this very occasion, a rainbow flag with fifty pink stars waving merrily over a crowd of happy, free people.

Steve looked hesitantly from Bucky’s angry face to the TV on the wall and back, confused and just a little bit guilty.

“I don’t know, bud, it just never came up,” he said, moving slowly into the kitchen, eyeing his friend carefully. “Why, what’s the big deal? It’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

Bucky dropped the knife onto the counter with a clatter as his heart clenched and his stomach flipped. His throat felt tight. He called it all anger.

“It never came up?” he repeated, not looking at his partner. “I know my memory isn’t the best with these things,” he continued tightly, ignoring the way the captain flinched, “but I can think of a few times when we had a conversation about this.”

 

_Laying in the early morning, pressed close together in the small, twin sized cot, Steve sprawled over his chest, fingers entwined and resting on his shoulder. Springtime sunlight filtered in through their one, dirty window, making his hair glow golden white like an angel. Bucky nuzzled in close, smelling the sex sweat left clinging to his partner’s forehead._

_“We should get married,” he said, both offhand and completely serious. Steve’s head lolled lazy on his chest, tipping up to look at him with a lopsided smile._

_“Yeah Buck? You wanna get hitched?” he teased, pushing up onto one pointy elbow, grinning._

_“Yeah Stevie, I wanna marry you. Tie you down before you find someone better. Put a ring on you so you can’t get rid of me,” Bucky said with as straight a face as he could manage with his whole world collapsing into giggles above him._

_“Well let’s head on down to the courthouse, then,” Steve joked. “Have them declare us husbands and husbands, you may now kiss your husband, and we’ll go bopping along to get a place in the suburbs with a picket fence. That sound good to you?” Bucky answered by wrestling his way on top of the blond, squirming with giggles all the while. He tugged the sheet above both of their heads, kissing Steve in the quiet of their own, private world._

_“I wanna spend every morning like this,” he said, pressing the words into the hollow, fragile space under Steve’s ear. “With you. For the rest of my life. That sounds good to me.”_

_“Me too, Buck,” was his answer, knobby knees squeezing his hips and long, artists fingers tugging gently at his hair. He gathered Steve up in his arms, pressing down against the smaller man, like if he held on tight enough, they would never have to leave this life between them, kept safe in the white glow of their bed._

“Bucky, that was a long time ago,” Steve said, hands up as he took a couple steps closer to his friend.

“So, what?” Bucky demanded. “You don’t mean it anymore?” His heart hurt, his jaw clenched, and he looked at Steve with that same blank, soldier face he knew his boyfriend hated so much. “You don’t wanna marry me no more?”

“Bucky, no, you know that’s not it,” Steve said, long legs bringing him right up next to him, putting hands on him, blues eyes flickering, trying to connect through that terrible blank stare. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t wanna pressure you, or assume anything. It was a different world back then, we said all those things because they could never come true. I didn’t want you to think you had to do anything, not after all you’ve been through. All _we’ve_ been through.” Steve took a breath, catching Bucky’s gaze from where it had dropped to the countertop. “Bucky, please.”

“Did you mean it? Back then?” he asked, hands still clenched tightly at his sides. He couldn’t look at his boyfriend right now. He looked over his shoulder instead, to where Natasha had frozen by the sink, looking small and inconspicuous, communicating silently with Clint, who was leaning against the doorway, pool queue in hand, watching warily. Steve’s sigh ghosted across his cheek.

“Yes, I meant it. But it’s okay, I know things are different now—”

Bucky cut him off with a hard look.

“Well, I still mean it.” He said, his voice hard, his anger doing a poor job of masking his hurt and worry. “And apparently we’re allowed to do that now, so do you want to marry me or not?”

“Bucky,” Steve breathed, eyes wide, face open. “You really want that?”

He nodded, once, sharp and quick, a challenge in the tip of his jaw, but his eyes were vulnerable.

“Then yes,” Steve whispered, hands tightening where he held onto him, like he couldn’t believe he was real. “Yes, I wanna marry you,” he said again, firmer and louder, a smile splitting his face wide open.

The look of wonder on his face went a long way to soothing the lingering hurt in the brunets chest and those five little words did the rest, nearly bringing him to his knees with happiness and relief.

Super strong arms came around his shoulders, metal and flesh alike, and crushed him into Steve’s broad chest, holding on tight. Bucky tucked his face into his neck, arms circling his waist, a choking, hysteric laugh forcing its way out of his lungs. Steve responded in kind, leaning back just far enough to kiss him, hard and happy, laughing into his mouth, cheeks wet.

“You’re a sonofabitch, you know that,” Bucky mumbled against his lips, eyes squeezed shut.

“Me?” Steve said incredulously, pulling back to look at him. “Only you could make a marriage proposal sound like an ultimatum.”

“Shut up,” Bucky said, grinning as he socked his _fiancé_ in the shoulder.

“ _So do you wanna marry me or not?”_ Steve mocked with a dumb look on his face.

“Knock it off, punk.” Bucky said, simultaneously shoving Steve away and pulling him even closer. He dropped his forehead down against a tan collarbone. “You had me thinking you didn’t want me anymore,” he confided quietly to the white t-shirt beneath his head.

“Don’t be dumb,” Steve chuckled, butting his obnoxious jawline into Bucky’s temple. “Or I’ll take it back.”

“You don’t get to take it back again,” he growled, teeth nipping hard through the shirt. “Ever again.” He straightened up, a cocky grin on his face. “You’re stuck with me, punk.”

Steve squeezed him tighter, holding him like he never wanted to let go, like if he could go back and rewrite time he would’ve grabbed hold of this man and never let go, not until they were in this moment, right here. He let his hands fall to cradle Bucky’s metal one in their palms. He brought it up in the scant space between their chests to his lips.

“I can’t wait to put a ring on this hand,” he said, words and lips warming the cold metal and Bucky’s breath caught in his throat and he felt himself blinking back tears, his heart beating double time. He was so caught off guard by such a blatant and honest show of emotion and devotion, his blood was pumping through his body like it was doing the Lindy Hop and the backs of his eyes were prickling like a newly starched uniform. It felt surprisingly wonderful.

He eventually shook his hand loose from Steve’s grasp and shoved him hard in the chest.

“Goddamn sap,” he accused, his flesh hand doing a cursory swipe of his face. No tears, just a dopey smile.

“You love me,” Steve answered back on a laugh, hands grabbing at his new fiancé again, as if he couldn’t stand not touching him.

“Damn right I do.”

“That how you’re gonna say it at the wedding?” Steve teased.

“Don’t tempt me, sounds ‘bout right, dontcha think?”

“Definitely sounds like you, Buck,” he replied with a grin wide enough to rival the Cheshire Cat. Even the new, animated one, that was scary as fuck. Bucky grinned back, cheeks starting to ache with years worth of waiting.

“I’m gonna marry the shit out of you,” he proclaimed before reeling his partner in and planting a kiss right on his teeth as Steve laughed in his arms.


End file.
